Was PvP gear ever really the problem?

As we know, Blizzard is removing, or at least significantly reducing, the effect of gear in PvP in Legion. While this seems good on paper, after giving it more thought, I came to the conclusion that the gear was never really the problem for me.

Whenever I lost in PvP and the opponent had better gear, I was OK with it. I knew that all I needed to do was play more, get the gear, and I would beat them without problems. Never did I think 'fuck this game, PvP gear is ruining it'. But the times I thought 'fuck this game, class balance is nonexistent' were countless.

I just can't shake the feeling that Blizzard is fixing the wrong problem. Maybe they are in for an unpleasant surprise.

The problem dates back to Vanilla wow where raiders outgeared and slaughtered everyone in BG's.
Seeing the pvp gear back then was to hard to get compared to getting lucky in raids the had to add stuff.

This backfired because PVP gear got to damm strong making it impossible to defend / kill a geared ganker with your pve geared toon.
then the tried a bunch of things but the advantages of gear still makes to much of a impact.

And yes... class balance please-.- chaos bolts nearly 1shotting you is not fun nor is it to wail on a blood DK and see him self heal more then you deal dmg.
Tho i can understand having (soon to be) 11 classes... with nearly all having 3 specs. it gets complicated.

PvP gear was a stupid concept, I've been advocating since the days of TBC that we should just give people one set of high tier armor, and let them acquire it however they want -- raiding / pvp / crafting / killing boars, etc. etc.; This whole pvp power fiasco had just proven that clinging onto the model that was hated since tbc (resilience) was not the answer.

I sincerely hope they pull off the new system in a way that's fun for everyone; I am sceptical after WoD of anything Blizz does with WoW, but I feel like it was a step in the right direction to make PvP less about who botted longer or bought an arena / RBG boost, and more about actually knowing more about how to play the game.

The more they are fucking with everything the less I feel pvp gear and even resilience was a problem. PvE gear now only increasing overall stats by ~5% at most, having 0 control over secondaries and having completely seperate pvp talents which include active skills that are only usable in instanced pvp is really not the grand resolution I was expecting or hoping for after all these years of iteration.

The more they are fucking with everything the less I feel pvp gear and even resilience was a problem. PvE gear now only increasing overall stats by ~5% at most, having 0 control over secondaries and having completely seperate pvp talents which include active skills that are only usable in instanced pvp is really not the grand resolution I was expecting or hoping for after all these years of iteration.

PVP gear is capped in PVP instances and is boosted in world for PVP gear to compete with PVE gear in WoD. In Legion, they are taking away any chance of PVP gear being viable against someone in PVE gear and removing the cap from PVP instances.

The promise is that for the removal of the cap that PVE gear will only have a 5% edge over PVP gear....and you will have to grind honor levels to reach max potential with PVP talents. Prestige system is definitely not for casual players as they will be crushed by players with full PVP talents.

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Originally Posted by Sukk

The fact that there is no pvp gear in legion will make it so I can also have fun in pvp on my alts w/o getting Roflstomped for 1-2 weeks before I get enough gear to actually pvp.

It's a good change.

It takes less than a day to fully gear for PVP in WoD. In Legion, you will have to grind for hours to have PVP talents. You will be stomped hard by players at highier honor levels.

Battle for Abilities = WoD 2.0

Originally Posted by Rekz

I'll trust blizzard over your assessment. They've been doing this for a long time. It may very well be that your class is nerfed in which case, your class will feel as if it doesn't work correctly.

it wasn't really the gear itself that was the issue, but rather the amount of stat difference between having say the blue and the epic set, or even just a previous season set vs. new set which was staggering to say the least. Their aim with Legion is to pretty much have everyone on a equal footing so that skill matters more than just playing longer then the other person and having a ~20-25% stat difference.

The problem with PvP gear is not necessarily that an opponent is better equipped thus more powerful.

The problem lied with the simple fact that during the time you geared your twink or character for pvp you basically was unable to participate.
In WoD the issue is no longer that persistant due to scaling and easy access, but before WoD it was.

You basically had to join a BG where you were unable to even kill someone despite to help significantly to win the bg. But more important to that, because of this fact you was a serious burdon for your team. Your team basically had one person less than the enemy team. Just because design wise you coulnd't even remotely compete.

That led to this unpleasent cycle of having to do pvp to get access to the gear you despreately need in order to even do pvp and to play with your team. But before you got your equip you basically just died through one BG after another, helped your team to lose because you coulnd't carry yourself and got more and more frustrated.
Finally when you had your first set of honor pvp gear, which could have taken more than 2 weeks before WoD, you still faced an uphill battle against opponents with conquest gear.

Gearing for pvp while doing pvp to be actually able to pvp is just a flawed design with a lot of issues and cycles of frustrtaion for you and your teammates.

However, just getting rid of every way to customize pvp stats or have a fixed stat budget for pvp is also not a really good way to fix the core problem, but a workaround.
I personally don't like the split between pvp and pve.

The problem with PvP gear is not necessarily that an opponent is better equipped thus more powerful.

The problem lied with the simple fact that during the time you geared your twink or character for pvp you basically was unable to participate.
In WoD the issue is no longer that persistant due to scaling and easy access, but before WoD it was.

You basically had to join a BG where you were unable to even kill someone despite to help significantly to win the bg. But more important to that, because of this fact you was a serious burdon for your team. Your team basically had one person less than the enemy team. Just because design wise you coulnd't even remotely compete.

That led to this unpleasent cycle of having to do pvp to get access to the gear you despreately need in order to even do pvp and to play with your team. But before you got your equip you basically just died through one BG after another, helped your team to lose because you coulnd't carry yourself and got more and more frustrated.
Finally when you had your first set of honor pvp gear, which could have taken more than 2 weeks before WoD, you still faced an uphill battle against opponents with conquest gear.

Gearing for pvp while doing pvp to be actually able to pvp is just a flawed design with a lot of issues and cycles of frustrtaion for you and your teammates.

However, just getting rid of every way to customize pvp stats or have a fixed stat budget for pvp is also not a really good way to fix the core problem, but a workaround.
I personally don't like the split between pvp and pve.

Let me take your argument and flip it. People without full honor rank talents are going to be a detriment to their team. Also the people working on ranking up Prestige in essence are going to be carried by those with full honor rank talents.

The last honor level talent is 46 honor level: Sharpen Blade - When activated (45s CD), your next Mortal Strike will deal 50% more damage and reduces healing taken by 70% for 4 sec.

In WoD, a player that is under geared could still CC, throw a heal, etc to help out teammates. In Legion, they have stripped CC and utility from base line talents and are gated behind this honor PVP system.

Basically, just because they have normalized gear in PVP instances players with little or no honor rank will still be a detriment to a team versus a Warrior for example with full honor ranks.

Battle for Abilities = WoD 2.0

Originally Posted by Rekz

I'll trust blizzard over your assessment. They've been doing this for a long time. It may very well be that your class is nerfed in which case, your class will feel as if it doesn't work correctly.

Anyone who has played a CoD title knows a prestige system is a problem of balance for players who decide to start over from level 1. The Legion pvp model follows that almost to a T.

As it's been said, you are a detriment to your team if you don't have certain abilities/talents unlocked. You're more a detriment than if you're 5% under powered as it stands now.

Every time you prestige in Legion, you start back over with no unlocked talent/abilities as you would in CoD with baseline guns. Everyone knows, the majority of weapons/perks/equipment unlocked at later levels are simply superior to what you start out with at level 1 in those games. It really won't be any different here.

There's way more at play here with using this system in WoW than CoD though. Everyone in CoD has access to the same weapons/perks/equipment. In WoW, there will ultimately be huge discrepancies of balance/power between any given class, based on what they gain and when they gain it with the new honor system. This alone will never be balanced. What little balance existed between classes/specs, this sort of feature guarantees the problem remains exacerbated more than before.

While it works decently well in CoD, it's going to be a complete shit-show in WoW. If anyone really believes the game is going to be more balanced in Legion, not only are they a delusional white knight but they literally have no understanding of pvp.

I'm not sure why anyone is surprised by this though. Activision has made it a core feature in the CoD franchise. Why wouldn't they want to see this shit-model applied to another title?

For me I've always wanted to try other classes I haven't played much before, but I don't feel like going through the whole getting curbstomped until I get all those alts geared up, so I've always just ended up playing my one main.

I don't see any downside to no pvp gear system. It makes the game more balanced. No hassle of farming honor then conquest (you have to get honor lvl but that's one time thing) and you can play which ever spec you want. Think about hybrid classes now they cant switch between healer/ dps, even dps classes cant switch to other spec cause gearing might be different. I would actually prefer if gear didn't play any role at all. With current gear will play 2% increase stat might lead to some bad outcomes. As in pve gear or making it harder for new people to achive high ratings cause higher rated players will have better gear on top of being better skilled even if just 2% better stat.

Is there any info out on aprox how long it might take to reach highest honor lvl?